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Sunflash

By Sunflash
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Sunflash Lieutenant

Sunflash

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Allright. Stupid friend of mine decided "HEY STAR TREK ONLINE WENT FREE TO PLAY. I'MA GO CHECK THAT OUT!"

 

 

Well, his problem, right? NOPE.

 

 

 

"DUDE THIS IS ACTUALLY PRETTY COOL YOU NEED TO COME PLAY IT WITH ME."

 

 

Damnit.

 

 

 

 

 

In related news, I'm not actually dead...

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Sunflash Lieutenant

Sunflash

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Okay but in all seriousness, STO is actually fairly decent. Perhaps even good, though I am not overly picky when it comes to my games so take that as fair warning.

 

 

Presuming you decide to go the Free-to-Play route, you start out with only two character slots, and you can only be a Federation officer(Klingon unlocks at...22?) at the start.

 

 

There are three 'Career Paths' to choose from, Tactical, Engineering, or Science; which can be broken down into "DPS", "Tank", and "Debuffing"(For you traditional MMO players). I'm led to believe that in the launch version, your career path also ditcated what type of ship you were able to fly, but this is no longer true. (For those curious, apparently the change to F2P made a LOT of changes, so it's probably worth re-checking out.)

 

I can tell you little for sure about the Tactical and Science Officers, since I chose Engineering. I have not been let down whatsoever. I do know(based on my NPC Tac/Sci Bridge Officers) that they seem to do about what you'd expect. My Tac officer has a grenade she likes to toss around, while the Science officer is enjoying knocking suckers flat on their back. As an Engineer on the ground, I don't get to be a tank quite like I'd hope(I suspect this is due more to being unused to the control schemes) and seem to lean more towards support.

This may be also influenced by the fact that my default 'kit'(think interchangeable skillset) has a set of landmines.

 

 

Ground combat is a touch rough, since they've made the extra steps such that both RPG(think Dragon Age) players AND FPS(Mass Effect was a good description) players will be able to play with their style. This is pulled off quite cleverly. It defaults to the standard MMO/RPG style(camera behind/above your character, left-click-hold turns the camera, right-click-hold moves camera and character, number keys trigger skills/shots), and has a setting(where you can also change to default to this mode) where you can slip into 'Shooter mode'(over the shoulder camera, mouse-look enabled, mouse left/right/middle click are 1/2/3 on your bar[those three can be moved with keyboard commands if needed, numberkeys also still work]).

 

Both seem to work out fairly well as far as making sense. I just can't decide which feels better for little old me. :clapping:

 

 

Space Combat is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, and is actually my favorite part thus far. It doesn't QUITE feel 'just right'(namely, the game has this thing about keeping things level, and you can't actually roll or pitch up/down 360), but I only really notice that when I'm not actually trying to blow things up, so good enough. On the flip side, you only have to worry about 'fore' and 'aft' weapon-arcs; and none of this business about worrying about starboard or port or the space-nautical versions of up-and-down. If an Aft weapon has 120 degrees left/right from center, it has 120 degrees up/down from center.

I probably fudged that explantion but I hope that makes enough sense. :P

 

 

You have three different 'ship types', with each having a lean towards a different style: Cruisers, Escorts, and Science Vessels. Each has a 'default career' that they favor, but can be used by all three officer-types.

 

Cruisers are the biggest ships, having poor speed, horribly turning, moderate wapons, and great shield/hull strength. They also have a HUGE crew capaicty(compared to the other types of their rank) which translates into great hull-repair. Cruisers fill the the slot of Tank /very/ well, doubly once you start getting the proper Bridge Officers set up(more on that later/another post). They work great at broadsiding in combat. Pick a target, and keep your side to their side and never stop shooting. Eventually you'll wear them down, and its off to the next punk.

 

Escorts are the tiny dinky ships, having mild crew, hull, and shields; but great weapons and speed/turning. They're not quite snub-fighters, but they're close, being well adapted to the art of dancing in and out of combat while also dropping torpedos and phasors and disruptors on anything they like to. Escorts are probably closely described as 'glass canons + fragile speedesters', having the abilty to deal stupid amounts of damage if you line up right, but also blow up rather quickly if you don't keep juking.

 

 

Science vessels run the middle, being about average in just about everything. What the Sci-ships do, however, is have lots of spare power for the debuffs and other tricksy things. Tractor beams, shield-drains, scanner-scrambles, the works. They excell at dicting exactly how a battle is going to run, and when it'll run. I don't have much experience with these types, so that's about all I know so far. :D

 

Each ship has x number of y Bridge Officer(commonly caled Boffs. Go figure.) slots, and x number of Y Consoles(Engineering, Tact, Science). Cruisers have bonus Engineering consoles/slots, Escorts get extra Tactical stuff, while Science Vessels have spare Science toys.

 

 

 

I'd go into more detail, but work just picked up so I gotta jet. Questions/comments abound if you want, I'll hit what I know when I get back! ;)

 

 

(And yes, FA, it's stupid fun.)

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Sunflash Lieutenant

Sunflash

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So I see! I think it should bear mentioning, however, that nearly everyone I talked too said it has changed /drasticlly/ since it launched F2P.

 

They may be exaggerating, but I wasn't anywhere near it at launch so I don't know. :clapping:

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  • 2 weeks later...
Sunflash Lieutenant

Sunflash

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::

 

No problemo... :)

 

 

<3!

 

Here. The extra inventory space, bank space, bridge officer slots as well as veteran rewards.

 

I'm already running out of inventory space.

 

Ah, right. Honestly only the bridge officer slot and the stipend seem interesting to me, as I kinda doubt(at this rate) I'll run out of inventory space and the rest is just fluff I don't overly care about. :blush:

 

 

 

Well, that and the priorty login. But I've only had issues once, soo....

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Matri Lieutenant

Matri

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as I kinda doubt(at this rate) I'll run out of inventory space

 

... You've been playing RPGs wrong, then. You can never have enough inventory space. :blush:

 

Plus, the free ships at every rank up is a steal. Free players get a discount at the higher ranks but honestly, that is still a hell of a lot of dilithium needed.

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Sunflash Lieutenant

Sunflash

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Pfffft, no; I've just hit item limits often enough to know how to apply "KEEP WHAT YOU NEED TURN THE REST INTO CASH" at a vicious level. :blush:

 

Also don't ALL players get a free ship every rank now? I'd have to login and check that it goes all the way....I kinda presumed, honestly. >.>

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